2013-14 Upfront Presentations: Preview

Like I mentioned last week, it’s the beginning of an incredibly busy week for the big five networks because the annual Upfront Presentation is upon is. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the Upfronts, it’s a weekly long gathering of the major networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and The CW) releasing their upcoming fall and spring schedules to potential investors. They estimate that about $9 billion is promised during this time frame so in the words of Ron Burgunday, it’s kind of a big deal.

Here are three stories of many to keep an eye on but we’ll provide more information on them as the week progresses:

NBC’s cult hit Community was picked up for a 5th season but it was one of only two comedies renewed by the network (Parks & Recreation was obviously the other one) so their week is pretty important as they will be introducing a ton of new comedies. We won’t be able to tell how successful that move is until this time next year but it’s definitely a bold move.

Long considered a practical shoe-in for a pickup, CBS passed on the high profile Beverly Hills Cop pilot from developer Shawn Ryan (The Shield) with Eddie Murphy (the original Beverly Hills Cop trilogy) in a recurring role. Sony (the studio) has gotten permission to pitch the show to other networks so we’ll have to see if it can score a pickup somewhere else.

One of, if not the, biggest pilots of the year is Marvel‘s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D at ABC. It marks the first foray into TV for Disney since they acquired Marvel so it was pretty much a lock to get picked up (Disney owns ABC). There’s been a lot of talk about just where the show will fit into their schedule because a lot of ABC programming skews towards female audiences to it will be interesting to see them try to slot one geared towards males.

That’s it for now but like I said, we’ll provide more comprehensive coverage to recap each day’s events. In the mean time, check out my Twitter account @kyle_igr because I may make a random comment or two (or 50) during the day.